When I attempt to load windows xp normally everything goes fine until it comes to the black loading screen with the three blue scrolling bars. The bars will move for 3 seconds and then stall for 1 second and then repeate OVER AND OVER AND OVER. It just sits there, scrolling, stalling, scrolling, staling and never loads windows xp. I tried Last Known Good Configuration and that didnt help. Initially I was able to get into Safe Mode, but following advice about trying to do an in-place repair of my windows install has now prevented access to Safe Mode. After xp setup copied files and rebooted the system, it went right back to that black load screen and did the same thing and didnt complete the repair install! Now when I use Safe Mode, I get "Windows Installation cannot complete in Safe Mode. System will now reboot." or something along those lines and all I can do is click OK for it to reboot. Right now I have windows XP on a second harddrive and I can see my primary drive just fine (cant access my personal files of course: My Documents > Access DENIED -- so if I need to back up all my stuff, I see no way to do so. I love you, Windows). Here's something I find REALLY odd, my primary drive has always used the drive letter E: (dont remember why, but it installed that way originally) and now on this second harddrive it's calling my primary drive C: Now, to get to the meat of what caused all of this: Longhorn 4015 I recently downloaded the leaked Longhorn 4015 and attempted to install it onto the second harddrive using Alcohol 120% to run the .iso image for installing with a virtual cd-rom. It got through phase 1 ok, but upon reboot into phase 2, it stopped in the screen about copying files. Just sat there doing nothing, so I clicked cancel. Then it sat there on the screen about "removing setup files" and did nothing. So I hard booted. Upon getting to the black boot screen for xp, I saw a blue stop error screen for less than a second (not long enough to even read one word of it to see what caused it) and then system rebooted. Loaded to the black boot screen, got the BSOD again. Now does as described above. SO. Two questions: 1. How can I fix my Windows installation if I can't run a Repair Install (since it still locks on the black boot screen) and now cannot use Safe Mode? 2. If I need to reformat/partition/fresh install etc, HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO SAVE ALL MY FILES IF I CANT GET TO THEM?! HELP :o

i've read of people using knoppix linux that runs from a cd, then they were able to save files off of the hard drive. http://www.knoppix.org/ Computer First Aid Using Knoppix

ignore question 2. i realized i can just change the file permissions to take ownership. so what i really need to know is how i can fix my boot up problem.

You say you can't run a repair because it still hangs at the loading screen? you shouldn't even get that loading screen when booting to your Xp cd to run a repair, it sounds like you're trying to run a repair from within Xp itself. Boot to your Xp cd.

No no, I mean I DID run a repair install, BUT at the point where it reboots the system to continue installing, that caused the system to come BACK to the issue of the black boot screen that hangs. - Booted to winxp cd - Hit enter to install - Hit R to do a repair install - Files copied over - Install rebooted to continue next steps of installation - System POST - XP black load/boot screen came up - Blue bars scroll, stall, etc and nothing happens - Setup cannot complete if it cannot get past that black boot screen Hopefully that explains it better.

Are you using Roxio Easy CD Creator? It's been known to cause boot hangs.

Remove un-neccessary hardware. If that doesnt do it, go into recovery console and start disabling 3rd party services. Just do a couple at a time... write them down, reboot. Its a pain but it sounds like a service is causing your problem